American frontier

"Wild West" redirects here. For other uses, see Wild West (disambiguation).

For cultural influences and their development, see Western (genre).

American frontier

The cowboy, the quintessential symbol of the American frontier, circa 1888
Date	1607 - 1912 (territorial)
Location	United States

The American frontier comprises the geography, history, folklore, and cultural expression of life in the forward wave of American westward expansion that began with English colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last mainland territories as states in the early 20th century. Enormous popular attention in the media focuses on the Western United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period sometimes called the Old West, or the Wild West.

As defined by Hine and Faragher, "frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states." They explain, "It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of peoples and cultures that gave birth and continuing life to America." Through treaties with foreign nations and native tribes, political compromise, military conquest, establishment of law and order, building farms, ranches and towns, marking trails and digging mines, and pulling in great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from coast to coast fulfilling the dreams of Manifest Destiny. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his "Frontier thesis" (1893) theorized that the frontier was a process that transformed Europeans into a new people, the Americans, whose values focused on equality, democracy, and optimism, as well as individualism, self-reliance, and even violence.

As the American frontier passed into history, the myths of the West in fiction and film took firm hold in the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike. America is exceptional in choosing its iconic self-image. "No other nation," says David Murdoch, "has taken a time and place from its past and produced a construct of the imagination equal to America’s creation of the West."

The terms "West" and "Frontier"

The frontier line was– the outer line of settlement. It moved steadily westward from the 1630s to the 1880s (with occasional movements north into Maine and Vermont, south into Florida, and east from California into Nevada). Turner himself favored the Census Bureau definition of the "frontier line" as a settlement density of two people per square mile. The "West" was the recently settled area near that boundary. In the 21st century, however, the term "American West" is most often used for the area west of the Mississippi River. Thus, the Midwest and parts of the American South, though no longer considered "western," have a frontier heritage along with the modern western states.

Colonial frontier

Main article: Thirteen Colonies

In the colonial era, before 1776, the west was of high priority for settlers and politicians. The American frontier began when Jamestown Virginia was settled by the British in 1607. In the earliest days of European settlement of the Atlantic coast, from 1607 to 1680, the frontier was essentially any part of the forested interior of the continent beyond the fringe of existing settlements along the coast. English, French, Spanish and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were quite different. Only a few thousand French migrated to Canada; these habitants settled in villages along the St. Lawrence river, building communities that remained stable for long stretches; they did not simply jump west the way the British did. Although French fur traders ranged widely through the Great Lakes and mid-west region they seldom settled down. However, relatively small but permanent settlements were established by the French in the Illinois Country, as well as, a larger settlement around New Orleans. Likewise, the Dutch set up fur trading posts in the Hudson River valley, followed by large grants of land to rich landowning patroons who brought in tenant farmers who created compact, permanent villages. They did not push westward.

In contrast, the seaboard British settlements gave priority to populous land ownership and individual farmers. The English colonies generally pursued a more systematic policy of widespread settlement of the New World for cultivation of the land. Unlike Britain, where a small number of landlords owned most of the good land, ownership in America was cheap, easy and widespread. Land ownership brought a degree of independence as well as a vote for local and provincial offices. The typical New England settlements were quite compact and small—under a square mile. Conflict with the Native Americans arose out of political issues, viz. who would rule. Early frontier areas east of the Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut River valley, and northern New England (which was a move to the north, not the west).

Most of the colonies had Indian wars. What are called the "French and Indian Wars" were imperial wars between Britain and France, with the French making up for their small colonial population base by using Indians as allies. were fought off and on between 1689 and 1763. They ended in a complete victory for the British, who took from France Canada and its western lands to the Mississippi River; the lands west of the river, including New Orleans, went to Spain. By the early 1770s Americans were moving across the Appalachians into western Pennsylvania, and areas of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Their most famous leader was Daniel Boone.

Advancing frontier and the Louisiana Purchase

Map of the Wilderness Road by 1785.

Main article: Louisiana Purchase

After winning the Revolutionary War (1783), American settlers in large numbers poured into the west. In 1788, American pioneers to the Northwest Territory established Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory.

In 1775, Daniel Boone blazed a trail for the Transylvania Company from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into central Kentucky. It was later lengthened to reach the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. The Wilderness Road was steep and rough, and it could only be traversed on foot or horseback, but it was the best route for thousands of settlers moving into Kentucky. In some areas they had to face Indian attacks. In 1784 alone, Indians killed over 100 travelers on the Wilderness Road. No Indians lived permanently in Kentucky but they sent raiding parties to stop the newcomers, like Abraham Lincoln's grandfather (who was scalped in 1784 near Louisville.)

Indian leader Tecumseh killed in battle in 1813 by Richard M. Johnson, who later became Vice president

Acquisition of Indian lands

The War of 1812 marked the final confrontation between major Indian forces trying to stop the advance, with British aid. The British war goal included the creation of an independent Indian state (under British auspices) in the Midwest. American frontier militiamen under General Andrew Jackson defeated the Creeks and opened the Southwest, while militia under Governor William Henry Harrison defeated the Indian-British alliance at the Battle of the Thames in Canada in 1813. The death in battle of the Indian leader Tecumseh dissolved the coalition of hostile Indian tribes. Meanwhile General Andrew Jackson ended the Indian military threat in the Southeast at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814 in Alabama. In general the frontiersmen battled the Indians with little help from the U.S. Army or the federal government.

To end the War of 1812 John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin (a leading anthropologist) and the other American diplomats negotiated the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 with Britain. They rejected the British plan to set up an Indian state in U.S. territory south of the Great Lakes. They explained the American policy toward acquisition of Indian lands:

The United States, while intending never to acquire lands from the Indians otherwise than peaceably, and with their free consent, are fully determined, in that manner, progressively, and in proportion as their growing population may require, to reclaim from the state of nature, and to bring into cultivation every portion of the territory contained within their acknowledged boundaries. In thus providing for the support of millions of civilized beings, they will not violate any dictate of justice or of humanity; for they will not only give to the few thousand savages scattered over that territory an ample equivalent for any right they may surrender, but will always leave them the possession of lands more than they can cultivate, and more than adequate to their subsistence, comfort, and enjoyment, by cultivation. If this be a spirit of aggrandizement, the undersigned are prepared to admit, in that sense, its existence; but they must deny that it affords the slightest proof of an intention not to respect the boundaries between them and European nations, or of a desire to encroach upon the territories of Great Britain. . . . They will not suppose that that Government will avow, as the basis of their policy towards the United States a system of arresting their natural growth within their own territories, for the sake of preserving a perpetual desert for savages.

New territories and states

As settlers poured in, the frontier districts first became territories, with an elected legislature and a governor appointed by the president. Then when population reached 100,000 the territory applied for statehood. Frontiersmen typically dropped the legalistic formalities and restrictive franchise favored by eastern upper classes, and adopting more democracy and more egalitarianism.

In 1800 the western frontier had reached the Mississippi River. St. Louis, Missouri was the largest town on the frontier, the gateway for travel westward, and a principal trading center for Mississippi River traffic and inland commerce.

Jefferson saw himself as a man of the frontier and a scientist; he was keenly interested in expanding and exploring the West

Thomas Jefferson thought of himself as a man of the frontier and was keenly interested in expanding and exploring the West. Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase of 1803 doubled the size of the nation at the cost of $15 million (about $0.04 per acre). Federalists opposed the expansion, but Jeffersonians hailed the opportunity to create millions of new farms to expand the domain of land-owning yeomen; the ownership would strengthen the ideal republican society, based on agriculture (not commerce), governed lightly, and promoting self-reliance and virtue, as well as form the political base for Jeffersonian Democracy.

Even before the purchase Jefferson was planning expeditions to explore and map the lands. He charged Lewis and Clark to "explore the Missouri River, and such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean; whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct and practicable communication across the continent for the purposes of commerce". Jefferson also instructed the expedition to study the region's native tribes (including their morals, language, and culture), weather, soil, rivers, commercial trading, animal and plant life.

Entrepreneurs, most notably John Jacob Astor quickly seized the opportunity and expanded fur trading operations into the Pacific Northwest. Astor's "Fort Astoria" (later Fort George), at the mouth of the Columbia River, became the first permanent white settlement in that area, although it was not profitable for Astor. He set up the American Fur Company in an attempt to break the hold that the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly had over the region. Astor by 1820, took over independent traders to create a profitable monopoly; he left the business as a multi-millionaire in 1834.

The fur trade

Fur trading at Fort Nez Percés in 1841

Plate from Audubon's Birds of America

Main article: Fur trade in North America

As the frontier moved westward, trappers and hunters moved ahead of settlers, searching out new supplies of beaver and other skins for shipment to Europe. The hunters were the first Europeans in much of the Old West and they formed the first working relationships with the Native Americans in the West. They added extensive knowledge of the Northwest terrain, including the important South Pass through the central Rocky Mountains. Discovered about 1812, it later became a major route for settlers to Oregon and Washington. By 1820 a new "brigade-rendezvous" system, however, sent company men in "brigades" cross-country on long expeditions, bypassing many tribes. It also encouraged "free trappers" to explore new regions on their own. At the end of the gathering season, the trappers would "rendezvous" and turn in their goods for pay at river ports along the Green River, the Upper Missouri, and the Upper Mississippi. St. Louis was the largest of the rendezvous towns. By 1830, however, fashions changed and beaver hats were replaced by silk hats, ending the demand for expensive American furs. Thus ended the era of the mountain men, trappers and scouts such as Jedediah Smith (who had traveled through more unexplored western land than any non-Indian and was the first American to reach California overland). The trade in beaver fur virtually ceased by 1845.

The federal government and the West

The private profit motive dominated the movement westward, but the Federal Government played a supporting role in securing land through treaties and setting up territorial governments, with governors appointed by the President. The federal government first acquired western territory from other nations or native tribes by treaty, then it sent surveyors to map and document the land. By the 20th century Washington bureaucracies managed the federal lands such as the General Land Office in the Interior department, and after 1891 the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture. After 1900 dam building and flood control became major concerns.

Transportation was a key issue and the Army (especially the Army Corps of Engineers) was given full responsibility for facilitating navigation on the rivers. The steamboat, first used on the Ohio River in 1811, made possible inexpensive travel using the river systems, especially the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. Army expeditions up the Missouri River in 1818-25 allowed engineers to improve the technology. For example, the Army's steamboat "Western Engineer" of 1819 combined a very shallow draft with one of the earliest stern wheels. In 1819-25 Colonel Henry Atkinson developed keelboats with hand-powered paddle wheels.

The federal postal system played a crucial role in national expansion. It facilitated expansion into the West by creating an inexpensive, fast, convenient communication system. Letters from early settlers provided information and boosterism to encourage increased migration to the West, helped scattered families stay in touch and provide neutral help, assisted entrepreneurs to find business opportunities, and made possible regular commercial relationships between merchants and the West and wholesalers and factories back east. The postal service likewise assisted the Army in expanding control over the vast western territories. The widespread circulation of important newspapers by mail, such as the New York Weekly Tribune, facilitated coordination among politicians in different states. The postal service helped integrated established areas with the frontier, creating a spirit of nationalism and providing a necessary infrastructure.

Scientists, artists and explorers

Government and private enterprise sent many explorers to the West. In 1805-6, Army lieutenant Zebulon Pike (1779–1813) led a party of 20 soldiers to find the head waters of the Mississippi. He later explored the Red and Arkansas Rivers in Spanish territory, eventually reaching the Rio Grande. On his return, Pike sighted the peak in Colorado named after him, was captured by the Spanish and released after a long overland journey. Unfortunately, his documents were confiscated to protect territorial secrets and his later recollections were rambling and not of high quality. Major Stephen Harriman Long (1784–1864) led the Yellowstone and Missouri expeditions of 1819-1820, but his categorizing in 1823 of the Great Plains as arid and useless led to the region getting a bad reputation as the "Great American Desert", which discouraged settlement in that area for several decades.

In 1811, naturalists Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859) and John Bradbury (1768–1823) traveled up the Missouri River with the Astoria expedition, documenting and drawing plant and animal life. Later, Nuthall explored the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the Oregon Trail, and even Hawaii. His book A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory was an important account of frontier life. Although Nuthall was the most traveled Western naturalist before 1840, unfortunately most of his documentation and specimens were lost. Artist George Catlin (1796–1872) traveled up the Missouri as far as North Dakota, producing accurate paintings of Native American culture. A Swiss visitor Karl Bodmer (1809–93), was in the U.S. in 1832-34 with the Prince Maximilian expedition; he made compelling landscapes and portraits. In 1803 John James Audubon (1785–1851) immigrated from Haiti and established a reputation as a leading explorer, woodsman, painter, and naturalist. His greatest achievement involved classifying and painting in minute details 500 species of birds, called Birds of America.

The most famous of the explorers was John Charles Frémont (1813–1890), a commissioned officer in the Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers. He displayed a talent for exploration and a genius at self-promotion that gave him the sobriquet of "Pathmarker of the West" and led him to the presidential nomination of the new Republican Party in 1856. He led a series of expeditions in the 1840s which answered many of the outstanding geographic questions about the little-known region. He crossed through the Rocky Mountains by five different routes, and mapped parts of Oregon and California. In 1846-7 he played a role in conquering California. In 1848-49, Frémont was assigned to locate a central route through the mountains for the proposed transcontinental railroad, but his expedition ended in near-disaster when it became lost and was trapped by heavy snow. His reports mixed narrative of exciting adventure with scientific data, and detailed practical information for travelers. It caught the public imagination and inspired many to head west. Goetzman says it was "monumental in its breadth--a classic of exploring literature."

The Antebellum West

Map of the Santa Fe Trail

Democracy in the Midwest

Wyman calls Wisconsin a "palimpsest" of layer upon layer of peoples and forces, each imprinting permanent influences. He identified these layers as multiple "frontiers" over three centuries: Native American frontier, French frontier, English frontier, fur-trade frontier, mining frontier, and the logging frontier. Finally the coming of the railroad brought the end of the frontier.

Frederick Jackson Turner grew up in Wisconsin during its last frontier stage, and in his travels around the state he could see the layers of social and political development. One of Turner's last students, Merle Curti used in-depth analysis of local Wisconsin history to test Turner's thesis about democracy. Turner's view was that American democracy, "involved widespread participation in the making of decisions affecting the common life, the development of initiative and self-reliance, and equality of economic and cultural opportunity. It thus also involved Americanization of immigrant." Curti found that from 1840 to 1860 in Wisconsin the poorest groups gained rapidly in land ownership, and often rose to political leadership at the local level. He found that even landless young farmworkers were soon able to obtain their own farms. Free land on the frontier therefore created opportunity and democracy, for both European immigrants as well as old stock Yankees.

Southwest

From the 1770s to the 1830s pioneers moved into the new lands that stretched from Kentucky to Alabama to Texas. Most were farmers who moved in family groups.

Historian Louis Hacker shows how wasteful was the first generation of pioneers; they were too ignorant to cultivate the land properly and when the natural fertility of virgin land was used up, they sold out and moved west to try again. Hacker says that in Kentucky about 1812:

"Farms were for sale with from ten to fifty acres cleared, possessing log houses, peach and sometimes apple orchards, inclosed in fences, and having plenty of standing timber for fuel. The land was sown in wheat and corn, which were the staples, while hemp [for making rope] was being cultivated in increasing quantities in the fertile river bottoms...."

"Yet, on the whole, it was an agricultural society without skill or resources. It committed all those sins which characterize a wasteful and ignorant husbandry. Grass seed was not sown for hay and as a result the farm animals had to forage for themselves in the forests; the fields were not permitted to lie in pasturage; a single crop was planted in the soil until the land was exhausted; the manure was not returned to the fields; only a small part of the farm was brought under cultivation, the rest being permitted to stand in timber. Instruments of cultivation were rude and clumsy and only too few, many of them being made on the farm. It is plain why the American frontier settler was on the move continually. It was, not his fear of a too close contact with the comforts and restraints of a civilized society that stirred him into a ceaseless activity, nor merely the chance of selling out at a profit to the coming wave of settlers; it was his wasting land that drove him on. Hunger was the goad. The pioneer farmer's ignorance, his inadequate facilities for cultivation, his limited means, of transport necessitated his frequent changes of scene. He could succeed only with virgin soil."

Hacker adds that the second wave of settlers reclaimed the land, repaired the damage, and practiced superior and more profitable husbandry. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner explored the individualistic world view and values of the first generation:

"What they objected to was arbitrary obstacles, artificial limitations upon the freedom of each member of this frontier folk to work out his own career without fear or favor. What they instinctively opposed was the crystallization of differences, the monopolization of opportunity and the fixing of that monopoly by government or by social customs. The road must be open. The game must be played according to the rules. There must be no artificial stifling of equality of opportunity, no closed doors to the able, no stopping the free game before it was played to the end. More than that, there was an unformulated, perhaps, but very real feeling, that mere success in the game, by which the abler men were able to achieve preëminence gave to the successful ones no right to look down upon their neighbors, no vested title to assert superiority as a matter of pride and to the diminution of the equal right and dignity of the less successful."

Manifest Destiny

Main article: Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny was the belief that the United States was pre-ordained to expand from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast. The concept was expressed during Colonial times, but the term was coined in the 1840s by a popular magazine which editorialized, "the fulfillment of our manifest destiny...to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." As the nation grew, it said "by the right of our manifest destiny." "Manifest destiny" became a rallying cry for expansionists in the Democratic Party in the 1840s as the Tyler and Polk administrations (1841–48) successfully promoted this nationalistic doctrine. However the Whig Party, which represented business and financial interests, stood opposed to Manifest Destiny. Whig leaders such as Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln called for deepening the society through modernization and urbanization instead of simple horizontal expansion. Starting with the annexation of Texas, the expansionists got the upper hand. John Quincy Adams, an anti-slavery Whig, felt the Texas annexation in 1845 to be "the heaviest calamity that ever befell myself and my country".

Helping settlers move westward were the emigrant "guide books" of the 1840s featuring route information supplied by the fur traders and the Frémont expeditions, and promising fertile farm land beyond the Rockies.

Mexico and Texas

Main article: Texas War of Independence

Sam Houston accepting the surrender of Mexican general Santa Anna, 1836

Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821, and took over Spain's northern possessions stretching from Texas to California. Caravans began delivering goods to Mexico's Santa Fe along the Santa Fe Trail, over the 870-mile (1,400 km) journey which took 48 days from Kansas City, Missouri (then known as Westport). Santa Fe was also the trailhead for the "El Camino Real" (the King's Highway), a trade route which carried American manufactured goods southward deep into Mexico and returned silver, furs, and mules northward (not to be confused with another "Camino Real" which connected the missions in California). A branch also ran eastward near the Gulf (also called the Old San Antonio Road). Santa Fe connected to California via the Old Spanish Trail.

The Spanish and Mexican governments attracted American settlers to Texas with generous terms. Stephen F. Austin became an "empresario," receiving contracts from the Mexican officials to bring in immigrants. In doing so, he also became the de facto political and military commander of the area. Tensions rose, however, after an abortive attempt to establish the independent nation of Fredonia in 1826. William Travis, leading the "war party," advocated for independence from Mexico, while the "peace party" led by Austin attempted to get more autonomy within the current relationship. When Mexican president Santa Anna shifted alliances and joined the conservative Centralist party, he declared himself dictator and ordered soldiers into Texas to curtail new immigration and unrest. However, immigration continued and 30,000 Americans with 3,000 slaves arrived in 1835. A series of battles, including massacres of Texans at the Alamo, which took the lives of famed Americans Davy Crockett and James Bowie, and at Goliad, ended in a decisive Texas victory at the Battle of San Jacinto where Sam Houston famously shouted "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad". Texans established the independent Republic of Texas in 1836. The U.S. Congress, however, refused to annex Texas, stalemated by contentious arguments over slavery and regional power. Texas remained an independent country, led by Sam Houston, until it was established to become the 28th state in 1845. The government of Mexico, however, viewed Texas as a runaway province and asserted its ownership.

The Mexican–American War

Main article: Mexican–American War

Mexico refused to recognize the independence of Texas in 1836, although most major nations did so. It threatened war if Texas joined the U.S., which it did in 1845. President James K. Polk sent negotiators but they were rejected by Mexico, whose government was in turmoil. The Mexican army killed an American unit in territory claimed by both nations, and both sides were eager for war. Whigs, such as Congressman Abraham Lincoln denounced the war, but it was quite popular outside New England.

The Mexican strategy was defensive; the American strategy was a three pronged offensive, using large numbers of volunteer soldiers. Overland forces seized New Mexico with little resistance and headed to California, which quickly fell to the American land and naval forces. From the main American base at New Orleans, General Zachary Taylor led forces into northern Mexico, winning a series of battles that ensued. The Navy took General Winfield Scott to Veracruz. He then marched his 12,000 man force west to Mexico City, winning the final battle at Chapultepec. Talk of acquiring all of Mexico fell away when the army discovered the Mexican political and cultural values were so alien to America's. As the Cincinnati Herald asked, what would the U.S. do with eight million Mexicans "with their idol worship, heathen superstition, and degraded mongrel races?"

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 ceded the territories of California and New Mexico to the United States for $18.5 million (which included the assumption of claims against Mexico by settlers). The Gadsden Purchase in 1853 added southern Arizona, which was needed for an anticipated railroad route. The completed Mexican cession covered over half a million square miles and increased the size of the U.S. by nearly 20% and included the states-to-be of California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. Managing the new territories and dealing with the slavery issue were challenges which lay ahead. Intense controversy arose with the Wilmot Proviso, which would outlaw slavery in the new territories. It never passed, and the issue of slavery in the West seemed to be resolved with the Compromise of 1850. California entered the Union in 1850 as a free state; the other areas would remain territories for many years.

The California Gold Rush

Clipper ships took 5 months to sail the 17,000 miles from New York to San Francisco

San Francisco harbor c. 1850. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco exploded from 500 to 150,000.

Main article: California Gold Rush

In 1846 about 10,000 Californios (Hispanics) lived in California, primarily on cattle ranches in what is now the Los Angeles area. A few hundred foreigners were scattered in the northern districts, including some Americans. With the outbreak of war with Mexico in 1846 the U.S. sent in Frémont and a U.S. Army unit, as well as naval forces, and quickly took control. As the war was ending gold was discovered in the north, and the word soon spread worldwide.

Thousands of "Forty-Niners" reached California, by sailing around South America (or taking a short-cut through disease-ridden Panama), or walked the California trail. The population soared to over 200,000 in 1852, mostly in the gold districts that stretched into the mountains east of San Francisco.

Housing in San Francisco was at a premium, and abandoned ships whose crews had headed for the mines were often converted to temporary lodging. In the gold fields themselves living conditions were primitive, though the mild climate proved attractive. Supplies were expensive and food poor, typical diets consisting mostly of pork, beans, and whiskey. These highly male, transient communities with no established institutions were prone to high levels of violence, drunkenness, profanity, and greed-driven behavior. Without courts or law officers in the mining communities to enforce claims and justice, miners developed their own ad hoc legal system, based on the "mining codes" used in other mining communities abroad. Each camp had its own rules and often handed out justice by popular vote, sometimes acting fairly and at times exercising vigilantism—with Indians, Mexicans, and Chinese generally receiving the harshest sentences.

The gold rush radically changed the California economy and brought in an array of professionals, including precious metal specialists, merchants, doctors, and attorneys, who added to the population of miners, saloon keepers, gamblers, and prostitutes. A San Francisco newspaper stated, "The whole country... resounds to the sordid cry of gold! Gold! Gold! while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pick axes." Over 250,000 miners found a total of more than $200 million in gold in the five years of the California Gold Rush. As thousands arrived, however, fewer and fewer miners struck their fortune, and most ended exhausted and broke.

Camps spread out north and south of the American River and eastward into the Sierras. In a few years, nearly all of the independent miners were displaced as mines were purchased and run by mining companies, who then hired low-paid salaried miners. As gold became harder to find and more difficult to extract, individual prospectors gave way to paid work gangs, specialized skills, and mining machinery. Bigger mines, however, caused greater environmental damage. In the mountains, shaft mining predominated, producing large amounts of waste. Beginning in 1852, at the end of the '49 gold rush, through 1883, hydraulic mining was used. Despite huge profits being made, it fell into the hands of a few capitalists, displaced numerous miners, vast amounts of waste entered river systems, and did heavy ecological damage to the environment. Hydraulic mining ended when public outcry over the destruction of farmlands led to the outlawing of this practice.

The mountainous areas of the triangle from New Mexico to California to South Dakota contained hundreds of hard rock mining sites, where prospectors discovered gold, silver, copper and other minerals (as well as some soft-rock coal). Temporary mining camps sprang up overnight; most became ghost towns when the ores were depleted.

The discovery of the Comstock Lode, containing vast amounts of silver, resulted in the Nevada boomtowns of Virginia City, Carson City, and Silver City. The wealth from silver, more than from gold, fueled the maturation of San Francisco in the 1860s and helped the rise of some of its wealthiest families, such as that of George Hearst.

Prospectors spread out and hunted for gold and silver along the Rockies and in the southwest. Soon gold was discovered in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota (by 1864).

The Oregon Trail

400,000 men, women and children walked 2,000 miles in six months in wagon trains on the Oregon Trail

Main article: Oregon Trail

To get to the rich new lands of the West Coast, some people sailed for six months, but 400,000 others walked 2,000 miles in six months in wagon trains that left from Missouri. They moved in large groups under an experienced wagonmaster, bringing their clothing, farm supplies, and animals. They followed the main rivers, crossed the mountains, and ended in Oregon and California. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared further and further west, eventually reaching all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The eastern half of the trail was also used by travelers on the California Trail (from 1843), Bozeman Trail (from 1863), and Mormon Trail (from 1847) which used many of the same eastern trails before turning off to their separate destinations.

In the "Wagon Train of 1843", some 700 to 1,000 emigrants headed for Oregon. Missionary Marcus Whitman led the wagons on the last leg. In 1846, the Barlow Road was completed around Mount Hood, providing a rough but passable wagon trail from the Missouri river to the Willamette Valley: about 2,000 miles. Some people went eastward on the Oregon Trail. Some did so because they were discouraged and defeated. Some returned with bags of gold and silver. Most were returning to pick up their families and move them all back west. These "gobacks" were a major source of information and excitement about the wonders and promises—and dangers and disappointments—of the far West.

Not all made it to their destination. There were many who perished from a variety of reasons such as: snake bites, being run over by wagons, gun shots, violence from other travelers, suicide, malnutrition, stampedes, Native American attacks, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, fever, snow and frostbite, avalanches, etc. One particularly well known example of those who did not make it to their destination was the ill-fated Donner Party, which resorted to cannibalism.

Mormons and Utah

Main article: History of Utah

Brigham Young, seeking to leave American jurisdiction to escape religious persecution in Illinois and Missouri, led the Mormons to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, owned at the time by Mexico but not controlled by them. A hundred rural Mormon settlements sprang up in what Young called "Deseret", which he ruled as a theocracy. It later became Utah Territory. Young's Salt Lake City settlement served as the hub of their network, which reached into neighboring territories as well. The communalism and advanced farming practices of the Mormons enabled them to succeed. They sold goods to wagon trains passing through and came to terms with local Indian tribes because Young decided it was cheaper to feed the Indians than fight them. Education became a high priority to protect the beleaguered group, reduce heresy and maintain group solidarity.

The great threat to the Mormon kingdom in Utah was the U.S. government, which took ownership of Utah in 1848 and, pushed by the Protestant churches, rejected theocracy and polygamy. Confrontations verged on open warfare in the late 1850s as President Buchanan sent in troops. There were no battles, and negotiations led to a stand down. The Republican Party swore to destroy polygamy, which it saw as an affront to religious, cultural and moral values of a modern civilization. After the Civil War the federal government systematically took control of Utah away from the Mormons, and drove the church's leadership underground. Meanwhile, aggressive missionary work in the U.S. and Europe brought a flood of Mormon converts to Utah. Finally in 1890 the Church leadership announced polygamy was no longer a central tenet, and a compromise was reached, with Utah becoming a state and the Mormons dividing into Republicans and Democrats.

The Pony Express and the telegraph

Map of Pony Express route

Main article: Pony Express

The federal government provided subsidies for the development of mail and freight delivery, and by 1856, Congress authorized road improvements and an overland mail service to California. The new commercial wagon trains service primarily hauled freight. In 1858 John Butterfield (1801–69) established a stage service that went from Saint Louis to San Francisco in 24 days along a southern route. This route was abandoned in 1861 after Texas joined the Confederacy, in favor of stagecoach services established via Fort Laramie and Salt Lake City, a 24-day journey, with Wells Fargo & Co. as the foremost provider (initially using the old "Butterfield" name).

William Russell, hoping to get a government contract for more rapid mail delivery service, started the Pony Express in 1860, cutting delivery time to ten days. He set up over 150 stations about 15 miles (24 km) apart.

In 1861 Congress passed the Land-Grant Telegraph Act which financed the construction of Western Union's transcontinental telegraph lines. Hiram Sibley, Western Union's head, negotiated exclusive agreements with railroads to run telegraph lines along their right-of-way. Eight years before the transcontinental railroad opened, the First Transcontinental Telegraph linked Omaha, Nebraska and San Francisco (and points in-between) on October 24, 1861. The Pony Express ended in just 18 months because it could not compete with the telegraph.

Bleeding Kansas

Main article: Bleeding Kansas

The massacre of anti-slavery Kansans. May 19, 1858.

Constitutionally, Congress could not deal with slavery in the states but it did have jurisdiction in the western territories. California unanimously rejected slavery in 1850 and became a free state. New Mexico allowed slavery, but it was rarely seen there. Kansas was off limits to slavery by the Compromise of 1820. Free Soil elements feared that if slavery were allowed rich planters would buy up the best lands and work them with gangs of slaves, leaving little opportunity for free white men to own farms. Few Southern planters were actually interested in Kansas, but the idea that slavery was illegal there implied they had a second-class status that was intolerable to their sense of honor, and seemed to violate the principle of state's rights. With the passage of the extremely controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Congress left the decision up to the voters on the ground in Kansas. Across the North a new major party was formed to fight slavery: the Republican Party, with numerous westerners in leadership positions, most notably Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. To influence the territorial decision, anti-slavery elements (also called "Jayhawkers" or "Free-soilers") financed the migration of politically determined settlers. But pro-slavery advocates fought back with pro-slavery settlers from Missouri. Violence on both sides was the result; in all 56 men were killed by the time the violence abated in 1859. By 1860 the pro-slavery forces were in control—but Kansas had only two slaves. The antislavery forces took over by 1861, as Kansas became a free state. The episode demonstrated that a democratic compromise between North and South over slavery was impossible and served to hasten the Civil War.

Civil War in the West

Mass hanging of Sioux warriors convicted of murder and rape in Mankato, Minnesota, 1862

The Trans-Mississippi theater

Main article: Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War

The Confederacy engaged in several important campaigns in the West. However, Kansas, a major area of conflict building up to the war, was the scene of only one battle, at Mine Creek. But its proximity to Confederate lines enabled pro-Confederate guerrillas, such as Quantrill's Raiders, to attack Union strongholds and massacre the residents.

In Texas, citizens voted to join the Confederacy; anti-war Germans were hanged. Local troops took over the federal arsenal in San Antonio, with plans to grab the territories of northern New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, and possibly California. Confederate Arizona was created by Arizona citizens who wanted protection against Apache raids after the United States Army units were moved out. At the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the Union ended the Confederate campaign and the area west of Texas remained in Union hands.

Missouri, a Union state where slavery was legal, became a battleground when the pro-secession governor, against the vote of the legislature, led troops to the federal arsenal at St. Louis; he was aided by Confederate forces from Arkansas and Louisiana. However Union General Samuel Curtis regained St. Louis and all of Missouri for the Union. The state was the scene of numerous raids and guerrilla warfare in the west.

Wartime Indian fighting

The most dramatic development was the Sioux war in Minnesota in 1862, when Dakota tribes systematically attacked German farms in an effort to drive out the settlers. Over a period of several days, Dakota attacks at the Lower Sioux Agency, New Ulm and Hutchinson, slaughtered 300 to 400 white settlers. The state militia fought back and Lincoln sent in federal troops. The ensuing battles at Fort Ridgely, Birch Coulee, Fort Abercrombie, and Wood Lake punctuated a six-week war, which ended in American victory. The federal government tried 425 Indians for murder; 303 were convicted and sentenced to death. Lincoln pardoned the majority; 38 leaders were hanged .

The decreased presence of Union troops in the West left behind untrained militias; hostile tribes used the opportunity to attack settlers. The militia struck back hard, most notably by attacking the winter quarters of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, filled with women and children, at the Sand Creek massacre in eastern Colorado in late 1864.

Kit Carson and the U.S. Army in 1864 trapped the entire Navajo tribe in New Mexico, where they had been raiding settlers, and put them on a reservation. Within the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, conflicts arose among the Five Civilized Tribes, most of which sided with the South being slaveholders themselves.

In 1862, Congress enacted two major laws to facilitate settlement of the West: the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Act. The result by 1890 was millions of new farms in the Plains states, many operated by new immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia.

The Postbellum West

Territorial governance after the Civil War

Camp Supply Stockade, February 1869

With the war over and slavery abolished, the federal government focused on improving the governance of the territories. It subdivided several territories, preparing them for statehood, following the precedents set by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It standardized procedures and the supervision of territorial governments, taking away some local powers, and imposing much "red tape", growing the federal bureaucracy significantly.

Federal involvement in the territories was considerable. In addition to direct subsidies, the federal government maintained military posts, provided safety from Indian attacks, bankrolled treaty obligations, conducted surveys and land sales, built roads, staffed land offices, made harbour improvements, and subsidized overland mail delivery. Territorial citizens came to both decry federal power and local corruption, and at the same time, lament that more federal dollars were not sent their way.

Territorial governors were political appointees and beholden to Washington so they usually governed with a light hand, allowing the legislatures to deal with the local issues. In addition to his role as civil governor, a territorial governor was also a militia commander, a local superintendent of Indian affairs, and the state liaison with federal agencies. The legislatures, on the other hand, spoke for the local citizens and they were given considerable leeway by the federal government to make local law.

These improvements to governance still left plenty of room for profiteering. As Mark Twain wrote while working for his brother, the secretary of Nevada, "The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two." "Territorial rings", corrupt associations of local politicians and business owners buttressed with federal patronage, embezzled from Indian tribes and local citizens, especially in the Dakota and New Mexico territories.

Federal land system

Homesteaders

In acquiring, preparing, and distributing public land to private ownership, the federal government generally followed the system set forth by the Land Ordinance of 1785. Federal exploration and scientific teams would undertake reconnaissance of the land and determine Native American habitation. Through treaty, land title would be ceded by the resident tribes. Then surveyors would create detailed maps marking the land into squares of six miles (10 km) on each side, subdivided first into one square mile blocks, then into 160-acre (0.65 km²) lots. Townships would be formed from the lots and sold at public auction. Unsold land could be purchased from the land office at a minimum price of $1.25 per acre.

As part of public policy, the government would award public land to certain groups such as veterans, through the use of "land script". The script traded in a financial market, often at below the $1.25 per acre minimum price set by law, which gave speculators, investors, and developers another way to acquired large tracts of land cheaply. Land policy became politicized by competing factions and interests, and the question of slavery on new lands was contentious. As a counter to land speculators, farmers formed "claims clubs" to enable them to buy larger tracts than the 160-acre (0.65 km²) allotments by trading among themselves at controlled prices.

In 1862, Congress passed three important bills that impacted the land system. The Homestead Act granted 160 acres (0.65 km²) to each settler who improved the land for five years, to citizens and non-citizens including squatters and women, for no more than modest filing fees. The law was especially important in the settling of the Plains states, although many farmers purchased their land from railroads at low rates.

The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 provided for the land needed to build the transcontinental railroad. The land given the railroads alternated with government-owned tracts saved for distribution to homesteaders. In an effort to be equitable, the federal government reduced each tract to 80 acres (320,000 m²) because of its perceived higher value given its proximity to the rail line. Railroads had up to five years to sell or mortgage their land, after tracks were laid, after which unsold land could be purchased by anyone. Often railroads sold some of their government acquired land to homesteaders immediately to encourage settlement and the growth of markets the railroads would then be able to serve. Nebraska railroads in the 1870s were strong boosters of lands along their routes. They sent agents to Germany and Scandinavia with package deals that included cheap transportation for the family as well as its furniture and farm tools, and they offered long-term credit at low rates. Boosterism succeeded in attracting adventurous American and European families to Nebraska, helping them purchase land grant parcels on good terms. The selling price depended on such factors as soil quality, water, and distance from the railroad.

The Morrill Act of 1862 provided land grants to states to begin colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts (engineering). The goal was to open new universities and make farming more scientific and profitable.

Transcontinental railroads

The meeting of the lines on May 10, 1869

Main article: First Transcontinental Railroad

In the 1850s government sponsored surveys to chart the remaining unexplored regions of the West, and to plan possible routes for a transcontinental railroad. Much of this work was undertaking by the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers, Corps of Topographical Engineers, and Bureau of Explorations and Surveys, and became known as "The Great Reconnaissance." Regionalism animated debates in Congress regarding the choice of a northern, central or southern route. Engineering requirements for the rail route were an adequate supply of water and wood, and as nearly-level route as possible, given the weak locomotives of the era. By 1855, a twelve volume report was issued but without any recommendation for a preferred route, but providing numerous options as well as providing a wealth of scientific knowledge.

In the 1850s proposals to build a transcontinental failed because of the disputes over slavery in Washington; with the secession of the Confederate states in 1861, the modernizers in the Republican party took over Congress and wanted a line to link to California. With a war underway it was impossible for the federal government to build the line; funding had to come from Europe, with the construction done by American firms using unskilled laborers who would live in temporary camps along the way. Men from China and Ireland would do most of the construction work. Theodore Judah, the chief engineer of the Central Pacific surveyed the route from San Francisco east. Judah's tireless lobbying efforts in Washington were largely responsible for the passage of the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act, which authorized construction of both the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific (which built west from Omaha). In 1862 four rich San Francisco merchants (Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins) took charge, with Crocker in charge of construction. Construction was completed in 1869, when the golden spike was hammered on May 10, 1869, touching off a national celebration. Coast-to-coast passenger travel in 8 days now replaced wagon trains or sea voyages that took 6 to 10 months and cost much more.

The road was built with mortgages from New York, Boston and London, backed by land grants. There were no federal cash subsidies; instead the federal government offered land-grants in a checkerboard pattern. The railroad sold every-other square, with the government opening its half to homesteaders. The government also loaned money—later repaid—at $16,000 per mile on level stretches, and $32,000 to $48,000 in mountainous terrain. Local and state governments also aided the financing.

Fleisig questions whether promoters of the Central Pacific Railroad were oversubsidized. He finds that subsidies were not an economic necessity because they "influenced neither the decision to invest in the railroad nor the speed of its construction." He estimates the rate of return for the railroad developers using government funds range from 71% to 200%, while estimates of private rates of return range from 15% to 25%. Mercer analyzes the impact of land grants, during 1864-90, on rates of return for the Central Pacific. He finds that even without land grants, the rates of return were high and that the land grants did not pay for the construction of the railroad. However they did produce large social returns in western states by accelerating construction of the system. Tutorow argues that the Big Four paid lip-service to the idea of free competition but in practice sought to destroy or weaken competing railroad and shipping lines. They repeatedly entered into pooling arrangements to prevent competition, bought out competitors, or forced rivals to agree not to compete with them. He concludes that Stanford and his partners viewed laissez-faire as applicable only to government controls and not to destruction of unwanted competition.

Most of the manual laborers on the Central Pacific were new arrivals from China. Kraus shows how these men lived and worked, and how they managed their money. He concludes that senior officials quickly realized the high degree of cleanliness and reliability of the Chinese. The Central Pacific employed over 12,000 Chinese workers, 90% of its manual work force. Ong explores whether or not the Chinese workers were exploited by the railroad. He finds the railroad set different wage rates for whites and Chinese and used the latter in the more menial and dangerous jobs, with whites in the better positions. However the railroad also provided camps and food the Chinese wanted and protected the Chinese workers from threats from whites.

Building the railroad required six main activities: surveying the route, blasting a right of way, building tunnels and bridges, clearing and laying the roadbed, laying the ties and rails, and maintaining and supplying the crews with food and tools. The work was highly physical, using horse-drawn plows and scrapers, and manual picks, axes, sledgehammers, and handcarts. A few steam-driven machines, such as shovels, were used. The rails were iron (steel came a few years later) and weighed 700 lb (320 kg). and required five men to lift. For blasting, they used black powder. The Union Pacific construction crews, mostly Irish Americans, averaged about two miles (3 km) of new track per day.

Six transcontinental railroads were built in the Gilded Age (plus two in Canada); they opened up the West to farmers and ranchers. From north to south they were the Northern Pacific, Milwaukee Road, and Great Northern along the Canadian border; the Union Pacific/Central Pacific in the middle, and to the south the Santa Fe, and the Southern Pacific. All but the Great Northern of James J. Hill relied on land grants. The financial stories were often complex. For example, the Northern Pacific received its major land grant in 1864. Financier Jay Cooke (1821–1905) was in charge until 1873, when he went bankrupt. Federal courts, however, kept bankrupt railroads in operation. In 1881 Henry Villard (1835–1900) took over and finally completed the line to Seattle. But the line went bankrupt in the Panic of 1893 and Hill took it over. He then merged several lines with financing from J.P. Morgan, but President Theodore Roosevelt broke them up in 1904.

In the first year of operation, 1869–70, 150,000 passengers made the long trip. Settlers were encouraged with promotions to come West on free scouting trips to buy railroad land on easy terms spread over several years. The railroads had "Immigration Bureaus" which advertised package low-cost deals including passage and land on easy terms for farmers in Germany and Scandinavia. The prairies, they were promised, did not mean backbreaking toil because "settling on the prairie which is ready for the plow is different from plunging into a region covered with timber." The settlers were customers of the railroads, shipping their crops and cattle out, and bringing in manufactured products. All manufacturers benefited from the lower costs of transportation and the much larger radius of business.

White concludes with a mixed verdict. The transcontinentals did open up the West to settlement, brought in many thousands of high-tech, highly paid workers and managers, created thousands of towns and cities, oriented the nation onto an east-west axis, and proved highly valuable for the nation as a whole. On the other hand too many were built, and they were built too far ahead of actual demand. The result was a bubble that left heavy losses to investors, and led to poor management practices. By contrast, as White notes, the lines in the Midwest and East supported by a very large population base, fostered farming, industry and mining while generating steady profits and receiving few government benefits.

Migration after the Civil War

Settlers crossing the Great Plains

After the Civil War, many from the East Coast and Europe were lured west by reports from relatives and by extensive advertising campaigns promising "the Best Prairie Lands", "Low Prices", "Large Discounts For Cash", and "Better Terms Than Ever!". The new railroads provided the opportunity for migrants to go out and take a look, with special family tickets, the cost of which could be applied to land purchases offered by the railroads. Farming the plains was indeed more difficult than back east. Water management was more critical, lightning fires were more prevalent, the weather was more extreme, rainfall was less predictable.

The fearful stayed home. The actual migrants looked beyond fears of the unknown. Their chief motivation to move west was to find a better economic life than the one they had. Farmers sought larger, cheaper and more fertile land; merchants and tradesman sought new customers and new leadership opportunities. Laborers wanted higher paying work and better conditions.

Oklahoma Land Rush

Main article: Oklahoma Land Rush

In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison authorized the opening of 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km²) of unoccupied lands in the Oklahoma territory acquired from the native tribes. On April 22, over 100,000 settlers and cattlemen (known as "boomers")^{[citation needed]} lined up at the border, and with the army's guns and bugles giving the signal, began a mad dash into the newly opened land to stake their claims (Land Run of 1889). A witness wrote, "The horsemen had the best of it from the start. It was a fine race for a few minutes, but soon the riders began to spread out like a fan, and by the time they reached the horizon they were scattered about as far as the eye could see". In one day, the towns of Oklahoma City, Norman, and Guthrie came into existence. In the same manner, millions of acres of additional land was opened up and settled in the following four years.

American Indian Wars

Chief Sitting Bull

Main article: American Indian Wars

Indian wars have occurred throughout the United States though the conflicts are generally separated into two categories; the Indian wars east of the Mississippi River and the Indian wars west of the Mississippi. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), provided an estimate of deaths:

"The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians."

Indian wars east of the Mississippi

The Trail of Tears

Main article: Trail of tears

The expansion of migration into the Southeastern United States in the 1820s to the 1830s forced the federal government to deal with the "Indian question." The Indians were under federal control but were independent of state governments. State legislatures and state judges had no authority on their lands, and the states demanded control. Politically the new Democratic Party of President Andrew Jackson demanded removal of the Indians out of the southeastern states to new lands in the west, while the Whig Party and the Protestant churches were opposed to removal. The Jacksonian Democracy proved irresistible, as it won the presidential elections of 1828, 1832 and 1836. By 1837 the "Indian Removal policy" began, to implement the act of Congress signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830. Many historians have sharply attacked Jackson. The 1830 law theoretically provided for voluntary removal and had safeguards for the rights of Indians, but in reality the removal was involuntary and brutal and ignored safeguards. Jackson justified his actions by stating that Indians had "neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvements."

The forced march of about twenty tribes included the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole). To motivate natives reluctant to move, the federal government also promised rifles, blankets, tobacco, and cash. By 1835 the Cherokee, the last Indian nation in the South, had signed the removal treaty and relocated to Oklahoma. All the tribes were given new land in the "Indian Territory" (which later became Oklahoma). Of the approximate 70,000 Indians removed, about 20% died from disease, starvation, and exposure on the route. This exodus has become known as The Trail of Tears (in Cherokee "Nunna dual Tsuny," "The Trail Where they Cried"). The impact of the removals was severe. The transplanted tribes had considerable difficulty adapting to their new surroundings and sometimes clashed with the tribes native to the area.

The only way for an Indian to remain and avoid removal was to accept the federal offer of 640 acres (2.6 km²) or more of land (depending on family size) in exchange for leaving the tribe and becoming a state citizen subject to state law and federal law. However, many natives who took the offer were defrauded by "ravenous speculators" who stole their claims and sold their land to whites. In Mississippi alone, fraudulent claims reached 3,800,000 acres (15,000 km²). Of the five tribes, the Seminole offered the most resistance, hiding out in the Florida swamps and waging a war which cost the U.S. Army 1,500 lives and $20 million.

Indian wars west of the Mississippi

Indian battles in the Trans Mississippi West

Indian warriors, using their traditional style of limited, battle-oriented warfare, confronted the U.S. Army. The Indians emphasized bravery in combat. The Army puts its emphasis not so much on individual combat as on building networks of forts, developing a logistics system, and using the telegraph and railroads to coordinate and concentrate its forces. Plains Indian inter-tribal warfare bore no resemblance to the "modern" warfare practiced by the Americans along European lines, using its vast advantages in population and resources. Many tribes avoided warfare and others supported the U.S. Army. The tribes hostile to the government continued to pursue their traditional brand of fighting and, therefore, were unable to have any permanent success against the Army.

Indian wars were fought throughout the western regions, with more conflicts in the states bordering Mexico than in the interior states. Arizona ranked highest, with 310 known battles fought within the state's boundaries between Americans and the natives. Arizona ranked highest in war deaths, with 4,340 killed, including soldiers, civilians and native Americans. That was more than twice as many as occurred in Texas, the second highest ranking state. Most of the deaths in Arizona were caused by the Apache. Michno also says that fifty-one percent of the Indian war battles between 1850 and 1890 took place in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, as well as thirty-seven percent of the casualties in the county west of the Mississippi River.

In the Apache Wars, Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson forced the Mescalero Apache onto a reservation in 1862. In 1863-1864, Carson used a scorched earth policy in the Navajo Campaign, burning Navajo fields and homes, and capturing or killing their livestock. He was aided by other Indian tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Utes.

In the Red River War 1874-75 the U.S. army forced the Comanche to return to their reservation by killing their horses; the last Comanche war chief, Quanah Parker, surrendered in June 1875.

Red Cloud's War was led by the Lakota chief Red Cloud against the military who were erecting forts along the Bozeman trail. It was the most successful campaign against the U.S. during the Indian Wars. By the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), the U.S. granted a large reservation to the Lakota, without military presence; it included the entire Black Hills.

Captain Jack was a chief of the Native American Modoc tribe of California and Oregon, and was their leader during the Modoc War. With 53 Modoc warriors, Captain Jack held off 1,000 men of the U.S. Army for 7 months. Captain Jack killed Edward Canby.

The battle near Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory, December 21, 1866

In June 1877, in the Nez Perce War the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph, unwilling to give up their traditional lands and move to a reservation, undertook a 1,200 mile fighting retreat from Oregon to near the Canadian border in Montana. Numbering only 200 warriors, the Nez Perce "battled some 2,000 American regulars and volunteers of different military units, together with their Indian auxiliaries of many tribes, in a total of eighteen engagements, including four major battles and at least four fiercely contested skirmishes." The Nez Perce were finally surrounded at the Battle of Bear Paw and surrendered.

The Great Sioux War of 1876-77 was conducted by the Lakota under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The conflict began after repeated violations of the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) once gold was discovered in the hills. One of its famous battles was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which combined Sioux and Cheyenne forces defeated the 7th Cavalry, led by General George Armstrong Custer.

Many of the Apache had been at war the Spanish and Mexicans for almost three centuries when the US annexed present-day Arizona and New Mexico in 1848. The U.S. finally induced the last hostile Apache band under Geronimo to surrender in 1886. (See Apache-Mexico Wars Apache wars)

The end of the Indian wars came at the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890 where the 7th Cavalry attempted to disarm a Sioux man and precipitated an engagement in which about 150 Sioux men, women, and children were killed. Only thirteen days before, Sitting Bull had been killed with his son Crow Foot in a gun battle with a group of Indian police that had been sent by the American government to arrest him.

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), "The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians."

Forts and outposts

As the frontier moved westward, the establishment of U.S. military forts moved with it, representing and maintaining federal sovereignty over new territories. The military garrisons usually lacked defensible walls but were seldom attacked. They served as bases for troops at or near strategic areas, particularly for counteracting the Indian presence. For example, Fort Bowie protected Apache Pass in southern Arizona along the mail route between Tucson and El Paso and was used to launch attacks against Cochise and Geronimo. Fort Laramie and Fort Kearny helped protect immigrants crossing the Great Plains and a series of posts in California protected miners. Forts were constructed to launch attacks against the Sioux. As Indian reservations sprang up, the military set up forts to protect them. Forts also guarded the Union Pacific and other rail lines. Other important forts were Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Fort Smith, Arkansas, Fort Snelling, Minnesota, Fort Union, New Mexico, Fort Worth, Texas, and Fort Walla Walla in Washington. Fort Omaha, Nebraska was home to the Department of the Platte, and was responsible for outfitting most Western posts for more than 20 years after its founding in the late 1870s. Fort Huachuca in Arizona was also originally a frontier post and is still in use by the United States Army.

Indian reservations

Native American chiefs, 1865

Main article: Indian reservation

Settlers on their way overland to Oregon and California became targets of Indian threats. Robert L. Munkres read 66 diaries of parties traveling the Oregon Trail between 1834 and 1860 to estimate the actual dangers they faced from Indian attacks in Nebraska and Wyoming. The vast majority of diarists reported no armed attacks at all. However many did report harassment by Indians who begged or demanded tolls, and stole horses and cattle. Madsen reports that the Shoshoni and Bannock tribes north and west of Utah were more aggressive toward wagon trains. The federal government attempted to reduce tensions and create new tribal boundaries in the Great Plains with two new treaties in the early 1850, The Treaty of Fort Laramie established tribal zones for the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Crows, and others, and allowed for the building of roads and posts across the tribal lands. A second treaty secured safe passage along the Santa Fe Trail for wagon trains. In return, the tribes would receive, for ten years, annual compensation for damages caused by migrants.

The Kansas and Nebraska territories also became contentious areas as the federal government sought those lands for the future transcontinental railroad. In the Far West settlers began to occupy land in Oregon and California before the federal government secured title from the native tribes, causing considerable friction. In Utah, the Mormons also moved in before federal ownership was obtained.

A new policy of establishing reservations came gradually into shape after the boundaries of the "Indian Territory" began to be ignored. In providing for Indian reservations, Congress and the Office of Indian Affairs hoped to de-tribalize Native Americans and prepare them for integration with the rest of American society, the "ultimate incorporation into the great body of our citizen population." This allowed for the development of dozens of riverfront towns along the Missouri River in the new Nebraska Territory, which was carved from the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase after the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Influential pioneer towns included Omaha, Nebraska City and St. Joseph.

American attitudes towards Indians during this period ranged from malevolence ("the only good Indian is a dead Indian") to misdirected humanitarianism (Indians live in "inferior" societies and by assimilation into white society they can be redeemed) to somewhat realistic (Native Americans and settlers could co-exist in separate but equal societies, dividing up the remaining western land). Dealing with nomadic tribes complicated the reservation strategy and decentralized tribal power made treaty making difficult among the Plains Indians. Conflicts erupted in the 1850s, resulting in various Indian wars.

Social history

Democratic society

Westerners were proud of their leadership in the movement for democracy and equality, a major theme for Frederick Jackson Turner. The new states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Ohio were more democratic than the parent states back East in terms of politics and society. The Western states were the first to give women the right to vote. By 1900 the West, especially California and Oregon, led the Progressive movement.

"The Awakening" Suffragists were successful in the West; their torch awakens the women struggling in the East and South in this cartoon by Hy Mayer in Puck Feb. 20, 1915

Scholars have examined the social history of the west in search of the American character. The history of Kansas, argued historian Carl L. Becker a century ago, reflects American ideals. He wrote: "The Kansas spirit is the American spirit double distilled. It is a new grafted product of American individualism, American idealism, American intolerance. Kansas is America in microcosm."

Urban frontier

The cities played an essential role in the development of the frontier, as transportation hubs, financial and communications centers, and providers of merchandise, services, and entertainment.

Panorama of Denver circa 1898.

Denver's economy before 1870 had been rooted in mining; it then grew by expanding its role in railroads, wholesale trade, manufacturing, food processing, and servicing the growing agricultural and ranching hinterland. Between 1870 and 1890, manufacturing output soared from $600,000 to $40 million, and population grew by a factor of 20 times to 107,000. Denver had always attracted miners, workers, whores and travelers. Saloons and gambling dens sprung up overnight. the city fathers boasted of its fine theaters, and especially the Tabor Grand Opera House built in 1881. By 1890, Denver had grown to be the 26th largest city in America, and the fifth-largest city west of the Mississippi River. The boom times attracted millionaires and their mansions, as well as hustlers, poverty and crime. Denver gained regional notoriety with its range of bawdy houses, from the sumptuous quarters of renowned madams to the squalid "cribs" located a few blocks away. Business was good; visitors spent lavishly, then left town. As long as madams conducted their business discreetly, and "crib girls" did not advertise their availability too crudely, authorities took their bribes and looked the other way. Occasional cleanups and crack downs satisfied the demands for reform.

With its giant mountain of copper, Butte, Montana was perhaps the largest, richest and rowdiest mining camp on the frontier. City boosters opened a public library in 1894. Ring argues that the library was originally a mechanism of social control, "an antidote to the miners' proclivity for drinking, whoring, and gambling." It was also designed to promote middle-class values and to convince Easterners the Butte was a cultivated city.

Race and ethnicity

A Buffalo Soldier. The nickname was given to the "Black Cavalry" by the Native American tribes they fought.

European immigrants

Temporary quarters for Volga Germans in central Kansas, 1875

European immigrants often built communities of similar religious and ethnic backgrounds. For example, many Finns went to Minnesota and Michigan, Swedes and Norwegians to Minnesota and the Dakotas, Irish to railroad centers along the transcontinental lines, Volga Germans to North Dakota, and German Jews to Portland, Oregon.

African-Americans

Blacks moved West as soldiers, as well as cowboys, farm hands, saloon workers, cooks, and outlaws. The famed Buffalo Soldiers were soldiers in the all-black regiments of the U.S. Army (with white officers). They served in numerous western forts. About 4000 blacks came to California in Gold Rush days.

In 1879, after the end of Reconstruction in the South, thousands of Freedmen moved from Southern states to Kansas. Known as the Exodusters, they were lured by the prospect of good, cheap land and better treatment. The all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas, which was founded in 1877, was an organized settlement that predates the Exodusters but is often associated with them.

Asians

The California Gold Rush set off large migrations of Hispanic and Asian people which continued after the Civil War. Chinese migrants, many of whom were impoverished peasants, provided the major part of the workforce for the building of Central Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad. Most of them went home by 1870 when the railroad was finished thousands stayed on. They also worked in mining, agriculture, and small businesses, and many lived in San Francisco. Significant numbers of Japanese also arrived in Hawaii and California as permanent settlers.

Hispanics

The great majority of Hispanics who had been living in the former territories of New Spain remained and became American citizens. Those in California were within a few years overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of Gold Rush arrivals, while those in New Mexico dominated towns and villages the changed little until well into the 20th century. New arrivals from Mexico arrived, especially after the Revolution of 1911 terrorized thousands of villages all across Mexico. Most went to Texas or California, and soon poor barrios appeared in many border towns. Early on there was a criminal element as well. The California "Robin Hood", Joaquin Murieta, led a gang in the 1850s which burned houses, killed miners, and robbed stagecoaches. In Texas, Juan Cortina led a 20-year campaign against Anglos and the Texas Rangers, starting around 1859.

Family life

On the Great Plains very few single men attempted to operate a farm or ranch; farmers clearly understood the need for a hard-working wife, and numerous children, to handle the many chores, including child-rearing, feeding and clothing the family, managing the housework, and feeding the hired hands. During the early years of settlement, farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors. After a generation or so, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their roles within the family. New conveniences such as sewing and washing machines encouraged women to turn to domestic roles. The scientific housekeeping movement, promoted across the land by the media and government extension agents, as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning, advice columns for women in the farm papers, and home economics courses in the schools all contributed to this trend.

Although the eastern image of farm life on the prairies emphasizes the isolation of the lonely farmer and farm life, in reality rural folk created a rich social life for themselves. They often sponsored activities that combined work, food, and entertainment such as barn raisings, corn huskings, quilting bees, Grange meetings, church activities, and school functions. The womenfolk organized shared meals and potluck events, as well as extended visits between families.

Childhood

Childhood on the American frontier is contested territory. One group of scholars, following the lead of novelists Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder, argue the rural environment was beneficial to the child's upbringing. Historians Katherine Harris and Elliott West write that rural upbringing allowed children to break loose from urban hierarchies of age and gender, promoted family interdependence, and in the end produced children who were more self-reliant, mobile, adaptable, responsible, independent and more in touch with nature than their urban or eastern counterparts. On the other hand historians Elizabeth Hampsten and Lillian Schlissel offer a grim portrait of loneliness, privation, abuse, and demanding physical labor from an early age. Riney-Kehrberg takes a middle position.

Prostitution

Main article: History of prostitution

Entrepreneurs set up shops and businesses to cater to the miners. The most famous were the houses of prostitution found in every mining camp worldwide. Prostitution was a growth industry attracting sex workers from around the globe, pulled in by the money, despite the harsh and dangerous working conditions and low prestige. Chinese women were frequently sold by their families and taken to the camps as prostitutes; they had to send their earnings back to the family in China. In Virginia City, Nevada, a prostitute, Julia Bulette, was one of the few who achieved "respectable" status. She nursed victims of an influenza epidemic; this gave her acceptance in the community and the support of the sheriff. The townspeople were shocked when she was murdered in 1867; they gave her a lavish funeral and speedily tried and hanged her assailant. Until the 1890s, madams predominately ran the businesses, after which male pimps took over, and the treatment of the women generally declined. The openness of bordellos in western towns depicted in films was somewhat realistic, allowing for the factor of Hollywood starlets. Gambling and prostitution were central to life in these western towns, and only later―as the female population increased, reformers moved in, and other civilizing influences arrived―did prostitution become less blatant and less common. After a decade or so the mining towns attracted respectable women who ran boarding houses, organized church societies, worked as laundresses and seamstresses, and strove for independent status.

Law and order

Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and others on the Dodge City Peace Commission

Author Waddy W. Moore uses court records to show that on the sparsely settled Arkansas frontier lawlessness was common. He distinguished two types of crimes: unprofessional (dueling, crimes of drunkenness, selling whiskey to the Indians, cutting trees on federal land) and professional (horse stealing, highway robbery, counterfeiting). Criminals found many opportunities to rob pioneer families of their possessions, while the few underfunded lawmen had great difficulty detecting, arresting, holding, and convicting wrongdoers. However, once convicted, punishment was severe. Bandits, typically in groups of two or three, rarely attacked stagecoaches with a guard carrying a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun; it proved less risky to rob teamsters, people on foot or solitary horsemen.

The dime novels and Hollywood films depicted frequent and common killings in Western towns, but in reality, law enforcement was much more stringent than in rural areas. Criminals avoided the cities, leaving the deputies the main chore of knocking down drunks and hauling them away. They also disarmed cowboys who violated gun-control edicts, tried to prevent dueling, and dealt with flagrant breaches of gambling and prostitution ordinances.

Dykstra argues that the violent image of the cattle towns in film and fiction is largely myth. The real Dodge City, he says, was the headquarters for the buffalo-hide trade of the Southern Plains and one of the West's principal cattle towns, a sale and shipping point for cattle arriving from Texas. He says the second Dodge City belongs to the popular imagination and thrives as a cultural metaphor for violence, chaos, and depravity. For the cowboy arriving with money in hand after two months on the trail, the town was exciting. A contemporary eyewitness of Hays City, Kansas paints a vivid image of this cattle town:

Hays City by lamplight was remarkably lively, but not very moral. The streets blazed with a reflection from saloons, and a glance within showed floors crowded with dancers, the gaily dressed women striving to hide with ribbons and paint the terrible lines which that grim artist, Dissipation, loves to draw upon such faces... To the music of violins and the stamping of feet the dance went on, and we saw in the giddy maze old men who must have been pirouetting on the very edge of their graves."

Tombstone, Arizona was a notoriously violent mining town that flourished longer than most, from 1877 to 1929. Silver was discovered in 1877, and by 1881 the town had a population of over 10,000. Western story tellers and film makers made as much money in Tombstone as anyone, thanks to the arrival of Wyatt Earp and his brothers in 1879. They bought shares in the Vizina mine, water rights, and gambling concessions, but Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt were soon appointed as federal and local marshals. They killed three outlaws in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight of the Old West. In the aftermath, Virgil Earp was maimed in an ambush and Morgan Earp was assassinated while playing billiards. Wyatt and others, including his brother Warren Earp, pursued those they believed responsible in a vendetta and warrants were issued for their arrest in the murder of Frank Stilwell. Wyatt later pursued various business interests in Colorado, Idaho, California, Arizona, and Alaska. Walter Noble Burns's novel Tombstone (1927) made Earp famous. Hollywood celebrated Earp's Tombstone days with John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), John Sturges's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and Hour of the Gun (1967), Frank Perry's Doc (1971), George Cosmatos's Tombstone (1993), and Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp (1994). They solidified Earp's modern reputation as the Old West's deadliest gunman.

Banditry

Main article: Banditry

Members of the Dalton Gang following the Battle of Coffeyville in 1892.

Banditry was a major issue in California after 1849, as thousands of young men detached from family or community moved into a land with few law enforcement mechanisms. San Francisco solved the problem with informal citizens' vigilance committees that gave drumhead trials and death sentences to well-known offenders. In rural areas Joaquin Murieta, Jack Powers, and other bandits terrorized the state. Fatal duels were often fought to uphold personal honor.

Some of the banditry of the West was carried out by Mexicans and Indians against white targets of opportunity along the U.S. –Mexico border, particularly in Texas, Arizona, and California. The second major type of banditry was conducted by the infamous outlaws of the West, including Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang, Black Bart, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and hundreds of others who preyed on banks, trains, and stagecoaches. Some of the outlaws, such as Jesse James, were products of the violence of the Civil War (James had ridden with Quantrill's Raiders) and others became outlaws during hard times in the cattle industry. Many were misfits and drifters who roamed the West avoiding the law. When outlaw gangs were near, towns would raise a posse (like in the movies) to attempt to drive them away or capture them. Seeing that the need to combat the gunslingers was a growing business opportunity, Allan Pinkerton ordered his National Detective Agency, founded in 1850, to open branches out West, and they got into the business of pursuing and capturing outlaws. There was plenty of business thanks to the criminals organized and trained by the James Gang, Butch Cassidy, Sam Bass, and dozens of others. Their names and exploits take a central role in American folklore, and their guns and costumes become children's toys.

Range wars

Main article: Range war

The 1892 Johnson County range war took place in Wyoming's Powder River country. Daniel Belgrad argues that in the 1880s centralized range management was the solution to the overgrazing that had depleted open ranges. Furthermore cattle prices were low. Ranchers were hurt by mavericking (taking lost, unbranded calves from other ranchers' herds), and responded by organizing cooperative roundups, blacklisting, and lobbying for stricter anti-maverick laws. The ranchers formed the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association, assembled a list of suspected rustlers, and hired 46 gunmen (half from Texas) to hunt down and shoot rustlers. However the farmers, who occasionally purloined a calf or two, resented the ranchers' collective political power. The farmers moved toward decentralization and the use of private winter pastures. The gunmen assembled in April 1892. The sheriff raised a posse of 200 men and besieged the invading force on a ranch after they shot two men. The acting governor alerted Washington which sent the Sixth Cavalry to take custody of the invaders. The courts freed the Texans. The confrontation represented opposing property rights systems. The result was the end of the open-range system and the ascendancy of stock ranching and farming. However the popular image depict the episode an act of vigilantism of aggressive absentee-owned firms against small individual settlers defending their rights.

Buffalo

Wounded buffalo, by Alfred Jacob Miller

Main article: American Bison

The rise of the cattle industry and the cowboy is directly tied to the demise of the huge herds of bison—usually called the "buffalo". Once numbering over 25 million on the Great Plains, the grass-eating herds were a vital resource animal for the Plains Indians, providing food, hides for clothing and shelter, and bones for implements. Loss of habitat, disease, and over-hunting steadily reduced the herds through the 19th century to the point of near extinction. The last 10-15 million died out in a decade 1872-1883; only 100 survived. The tribes that depended on the buffalo had little choice but to accept the government offer of reservations, where the government would feed and supply them on condition they did not go on the warpath. Conservationists founded the American Bison Society in 1905; it lobbied Congress to establish public bison herds. Several national parks in the U.S. and Canada were created, in part to provide a sanctuary for bison and other large wildlife, with no hunting allowed. The bison population reached 500,000 by 2003.

Cattle

Main article: Cattle drives in the United States

The end of the bison herds opened up millions of acres for cattle ranching. Spanish cattlemen had introduced cattle ranching and longhorn cattle to the Southwest in the 17th century, and the men who worked the ranches, called "vaqueros", were the first "cowboys" in the West. After the Civil War, Texas ranchers raised large herds of longhorn cattle. The nearest railheads were 800 or more miles north in Kansas (Abilene, Kansas City, Dodge City, and Wichita). So once fattened the ranchers and their cowboys drove the herds north along the Western, Chisholm, and Shawnee trails. The cattle were shipped to Chicago, St. Louis, and points east for slaughter and consumption in the fast-growing cities. The Chisholm Trail, laid out by cattleman Joseph McCoy along an old trail marked by Jesse Chisholm, was the major artery of cattle commerce, carrying over 1.5 million head of cattle between 1867 and 1871 over the 800 miles (1,300 km) from south Texas to Abilene, Kansas. The long drives were treacherous, especially crossing water such as the Brazos and the Red River and when they had to fend off Indians and rustlers looking to make off with their cattle. A typical drive would take three to four months and contained two miles (3 km) of cattle six abreast. Despite the risks, a successful drive proved very profitable to everyone involved, as the price of one steer was $4 in Texas and $40 back East.

By the 1870s and 1880s, cattle ranches expanded further north into new grazing grounds and replaced the bison herds in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska and the Dakota territory, using the rails to ship to both coasts. Many of the largest ranches were owned by Scottish and English financiers. The single largest cattle ranch in the entire West was owned by American John W. Iliff, "cattle king of the Plains", operating in Colorado and Wyoming. Gradually, longhorns were replaced by the American breeds of Hereford and Angus, introduced by settlers from the Northwest. Though less hardy and more disease-prone, these breeds produced better tasting beef and matured faster.

The funding for the cattle industry came largely from British sources, as the European investors engaged in a speculative extravaganza—a "bubble". Graham concludes the mania was founded on genuine opportunity, as well as "exaggeration, gullibility, inadequate communications, dishonesty, and incompetence." A severe winter engulfed the plains toward the end of 1886 and well into 1887, locking the prairie grass under ice and crusted snow which starving herds could not penetrate. The British lost most of their money—as did eastern investors like Theodore Roosevelt, but their investments did create a large industry that continues to cycle through boom and bust periods.

On a much smaller scale sheep grazing was locally popular; sheep were easier to feed and needed less water. However, Americans did not buy mutton. As farmers moved in open range cattle ranching came to an end and was replaced by barbed wire spreads where water, breeding, feeding, and grazing could be controlled. This led to "fence wars" which erupted over disputes about water rights.

Cowboys

A classic image of the American cowboy, as portrayed by C.M. Russell

Main article: Cowboy

Central to the myth and the reality of the West is the American cowboy. His real life was a hard one and revolved around two annual roundups, spring and fall, the subsequent drives to market, and the time off in the cattle towns spending his hard earned money on food, clothing, gambling, and prostitution. During winter, many cowboys hired themselves out to ranches near the cattle towns, where they repaired and maintained equipment and buildings. On a long drive, there was usually one cowboy for each 250 head of cattle. Alcohol was everywhere in the West (outside Mormondom), but on the trail the cowboys were forbidden to drink it.

Before a drive, a cowboy's duties included riding out on the range and bringing together the scattered cattle. The best cattle would be selected, roped, and branded, and most male cattle were castrated. The cattle also needed to be dehorned and examined and treated for infections. On the long drives, the cowboys had to keep the cattle moving and in line. The cattle had to be watched day and night as they were prone to stampedes and straying. The work days often lasted fourteen hours, with just six hours of sleep. It was grueling, dusty work, with just a few minutes of relaxation before and at the end of a long day. On the trail, drinking, gambling, and brawling were often prohibited and fined, and sometimes cursing as well. It was monotonous and boring work, with food to match: bacon, beans, bread, coffee, dried fruit, and potatoes. On average, cowboys earned $30 to $40 per month, because of the heavy physical and emotional toll, it was unusual for a cowboy to spend more than seven years on the range. As open range ranching and the long drives gave way to fenced in ranches in the 1880s, by the 1890s the glory days of the cowboy came to an end, and the myths about the "free living" cowboy began to emerge.

Many of the cowboys were veterans of the Civil War, particularly coming from both the Confederacy, and the Union, who returned to their home towns and found no future, so they went west looking for new opportunities. Some were Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and even Britons. Nearly all were in their twenties or teens. The earliest cowboys in Texas learned their trade, adapted their clothing, and took their jargon from the Mexican vaqueros or "buckaroos", the heirs of Spanish cattlemen from Andalusia in Spain. Chaps, the heavy protective leather trousers worn by cowboys, got their name from the Spanish "chaparreras", and the lariat, or rope, was derived from "la reata". All the distinct clothing of the cowboy—boots, saddles, hats, pants, chaps, slickers, bandannas, gloves, and collar-less shirts—were practical and adaptable, designed for protection and comfort. The cowboy hat quickly developed the capability, even in the early years, to identify its wearer as someone associated with the West. The most enduring fashion adapted from the cowboy, popular nearly worldwide today, are "blue jeans", originally made by Levi Strauss for miners in 1850. It was the cowboy hat, however, that came to symbolize the American West.

Cowtowns

Main article: Cowtown

Anchoring the booming cattle industry of the 1860s and 1870s were the cattle towns in Kansas and Missouri. Like the mining towns in California and Nevada, cattle towns such as Abilene, Dodge City, and Ellsworth experienced a short period of boom and bust lasting about five years. The cattle towns would spring up as land speculators would rush in ahead of a proposed rail line and build a town and the supporting services attractive to the cattlemen and the cowboys. If the railroads complied, the new grazing ground and supporting town would secure the cattle trade. However, unlike the mining towns which in many cases became ghost towns and ceased to exist after the ore played out, cattle towns often evolved from cattle to farming and continued on after the grazing lands were exhausted.

Conservation and environmentalism

TR's conservation policies

Concern with the protection of the environment became a new issue in the late 19th century, pitting different interests. On the one side were the lumber and coal companies who called for maximum exploitation of natural resources to maximize jobs, economic growth, and their own profit.

In the center were the conservationists, led by Theodore Roosevelt and his coalition of outdoorsmen, sportsmen, bird watchers and scientists. They wanted to reduce waste; emphasized the value of natural beauty for tourism and ample wildlife for hunters; and argued that careful management would not only enhance these goals but also increase the long-term economic benefits to society by planned harvesting and environmental protections. Roosevelt worked his entire career to put the issue high on the national agenda. He was deeply committed to conserving natural resources. He worked closely with Gifford Pinchot and used the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi² or 930,000 km²) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more Federal land, national parks, and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.

Roosevelt explained his position in 1910:

"Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us."

The third element, smallest at first but growing rapidly after 1870, were the environmentalists who honored nature for its own sake, and rejected the goal of maximizing human benefits. Their leader was John Muir (1838–1914), a widely read author and naturalist and pioneer advocate of preservation of wilderness for its own sake, and founder of the Sierra Club. Muir, based in California, in 1889 started organizing support to preserve the sequoias in the Yosemite Valley; Congress did pass the Yosemite National Park bill (1890). In 1897 President Grover Cleveland created thirteen protected forests but lumber interests had Congress cancel the move. Muir, taking the persona of an Old Testament prophet, crusaded against the lumberman, portraying it as a contest "between landscape righteousness and the devil." A master publicist, Muir's magazine articles, in Harper's Weekly (June 5, 1897) and the Atlantic Monthly turned the tide of public sentiment. He mobilized public opinion to support Roosevelt's program of setting aside national monuments, national forest reserves, and national parks. However Muir broke with Roosevelt and especially President William Howard Taft on the Hetch Hetchy dam, which was built in the Yosemite National Park to supply water to San Francisco. Biographer Donald Worster says, "Saving the American soul from a total surrender to materialism was the cause for which he fought."

The American frontier in popular culture

Poster for Buffalo Bill Wild West Show

The exploration, settlement, exploitation, and conflicts of the "American Old West" form a unique tapestry of events, which has been celebrated by Americans and foreigners alike—in art, music, dance, novels, magazines, short stories, poetry, theater, video games, movies, radio, television, song, and oral tradition—which continues in the modern era. Levy argues that the physical and mythological West inspired composers Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell.

The Frontier Thesis of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner, proclaimed in 1893, established the main lines of historiography which fashioned scholarship for three or four generations and appeared in the textbooks used by practically all American students.

Show business

The mythologizing of the West began with minstrel shows and popular music in the 1840s. During the same period, P. T. Barnum presented Indian chiefs, dances, and other Wild West exhibits in his museums, However, large scale awareness really took off when the dime novel appeared in 1859, the first being Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter. By simplifying reality and grossly exaggerating the truth, the novels captured the public's attention with sensational tales of violence and heroism, and fixed in the public's mind stereotypical images of heroes and villains—courageous cowboys and savage Indians, virtuous lawmen and ruthless outlaws, brave settlers and predatory cattlemen. Millions of copies and thousands of titles were sold. The novels relied on a series of predictable literary formulas appealing to mass tastes and were often written in as little as a few days. The most successful of all dime novels was Edward S. Ellis' Seth Jones (1860). Ned Buntline's stories glamorized Buffalo Bill Cody and Edward L. Wheeler created "Deadwood Dick", "Hurricane Nell", and "Calamity Jane".

Buffalo Bill Cody was the most effective popularizer of the Old West in the U.S. and Europe. He presented the first "Wild West" show in 1883, featuring a recreation of famous battles (especially Custer's Last Stand), expert marksmanship, and dramatic demonstrations of horsemanship by cowboys and Indians, as well as sure-shooting Annie Oakley.

National magazines such as Harper's Weekly featured illustrations by artists Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, and others, and married them to action-filled stories by writers like Owen Wister, together conveying vivid images of the Old West to the public. By 1901, with an authentic cowboy and historian of the West in the White House, the publicity was immense. Remington lamented the passing of an era he helped to chronicle when he wrote, "I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever...I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat."

Cowboy images

Statue of John Wayne at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California

The cowboy has for over a century been the iconic American image, recognized worldwide and saluted as an authentic hero by Americans. The best known cowboys are President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) who made "cowboy" internationally synonymous with the brash aggressive American; Will Rogers (1879–1935), the leading humorist of the 1920s; Charlie Siringo (1855–1928); and Andy Adams (1859–1935).

Roosevelt conceptualized the herder (cowboy) as a stage of civilization distinct from the sedentary farmer—a classic theme well expressed in the 1944 Hollywood hit Oklahoma! that unveils the conflict between cowboys and farmers. Roosevelt argued that the manhood typified by the cowboy—and outdoor activity and sports generally—was essential if American men were to avoid the softness and rot produced by an easy life in the city.

Rogers, the son of a Cherokee judge in Oklahoma, started with rope tricks and fancy riding, but by 1919 discovered his audiences were even more enchanted with his wit in his representation of the wisdom of the common man.

Cowboy, Pinkerton detective, and western author, Siringo was the first authentic cowboy autobiographer. His books helped popularize the romantic image of the American cowboy.

Adams spent the 1880s and 1890s in the cattle industry and mining in the Great Plains and Southwest. When an 1898 play's portrayal of Texans outraged Adams, he started writing plays, short stories, and novels drawn from his own experiences. His The Log of a Cowboy (1903) became a classic novel about the cattle business, especially the cattle drive. It described a fictional drive of the Circle Dot herd from Texas to Montana in 1882, and became a leading source on cowboy life; historians retraced his path in the 1960s, confirming his basic accuracy. His writings are acclaimed and criticized for realistic fidelity to detail on the one hand and thin literary qualities on the other.

The great cattle drive movie remains Red River (1948) directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. The unique skills of the cowboys are highlighted in the rodeo. It began in the 1880s when several Western cities followed up on touring Wild West shows and organized celebrations that included rodeo activities. The establishment of major cowboy competitions in the East in the 1920s led to the growth of rodeo sports. Rodeos combine the traditional skills of the range cowboy — calf and steer roping, steer wrestling, team roping, bronco riding, and horsemanship with the showmanship of bull riding, and barrel racing. Historians Pearson and Haney, have argued that the rodeo cowboys are more than just athletes; they are cultural icons representing such values as rugged individualism, patriotism, tradition, masculinity, and courage; they personify the heroic image of the Old West.

End of the frontier

When the eleventh U.S. Census was taken in 1890, the superintendent announced that there was no longer a clear line of advancing settlement, and hence no longer a frontier in the continental United States. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner used the statistic to announce the end of the era in which the frontier process shaped the American character.

Fresh farmland was increasingly hard to find after 1890—although the railroads advertised some in eastern Montana. Bicha shows that nearly 600,000 American farmers sought cheap land by moving to the Prairie frontier of the Canadian West from 1897 to 1914. However about two-thirds of them grew disillusioned with Canada and returned to the U.S.

Historiography

Scores of Turner students became professors in history departments in the western states, and taught courses on the frontier. Scholars have debunked many of the myths of the frontier, but they nevertheless live on in community traditions, folklore and fiction. In the 1970s a historiographical range war broke out between the "old" Western histories, which stressed the influence of the frontier on all of American culture, and the so-called "new Western history" which looked more narrowly at the trans-Mississippi West after 1850 and stressed cultural interaction between Americans and minorities such as Indians and Hispanics. By 2005, Aron argues, the two sides had "reached an equilibrium in their rhetorical arguments and critiques.". Meanwhile environmental history has emerged, in large part from the frontier historiography, hence its emphasis on wilderness.

Journalist Sidney Lubell saw similarities between the frontier's Americanization of immigrants that Turner described and the social climbing by later immigrants in large cities as they moved to wealthier neighborhoods. He compared the effects of the railroad opening up Western lands to urban transportation systems and the automobile, and Western settlers' "land hunger" to poor city residents seeking social status. Just as the Republican party benefited from support from "old" immigrant groups that settled on frontier farms, "new" urban immigrants formed an important part of the Democratic New Deal coalition that began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's victory in the 1932 presidential election.

Since the 1960s an active center is the history department at the University of New Mexico, along with the University of New Mexico Press. Leading historians there include Gerald D. Nash, Donald C. Cutter, Richard N. Ellis, Richard Etulain, Margaret Connell-Szasz, Paul Hutton, Virginia Scharff, and Samuel Truett. The department has collaborated with other departments and emphasizes Southwestern regionalism, minorities in the Southwest, and historiography.

Gallery

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  Zachary Taylor, top general in the Mexican War; his victories took him to the White House in 1848

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  Camping on the prairie. 1846

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  A Gold prospector in California

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  Building the transcontinental telegraph in 1861, with a Pony Express rider passing by.

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  Settlers escaping the Dakota War of 1862

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  Hourly re-enactment for tourists of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

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  Ralph Morrison, a hunter killed and scalped by Cheyenne in December 1868, near Fort Dodge, Kansas

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  The Poker Game, 1894, by C.M. Russell

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  Quanah Parker the last war chief of the Comanche.

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  A false front building in Chesaw, Washington.

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  "The Invaders" of The Johnson County War, 1892.

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  The O'Shaughnessy Dam was built in 1913 in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite National Park; it was supported by conservationists and opposed by environmentalists then and now.

See also

General

• Cowboy action shooting is a competitive shooting sport which originated in the early 1980s that requires shooters to compete using firearms typical of the mid-to-late 19th century including single action revolvers, lever action rifles (chambered in pistol calibers) and side by side double barrel shotguns or pump action shotguns with external hammers.
• Cowboy hat
• Boss of the plains
• Historical reenactment : an activity in which participants recreate some aspects of a historical event or period.
• National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum : museum and art gallery, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, housing one of the largest collections in the world of Western, American cowboy, American rodeo, and American Indian art, artifacts, and archival materials.
• Reno Gang : Southern Indiana post civil war gang. First Train Robbers in US History. 10 members lynched by vigilante mob in 1868.
• Rodeo : demonstration of cattle wrangling skills.
• The Oregon-California Trails Association preserves, protects and shares the histories of emigrants who followed these trails westward.
• Wanted poster : a poster, popular in mythic scenes of the west, let the public know of criminals whom authorities wish to apprehend.
• Wild West Shows : a following of the wild west shows of the American frontier.
• The West As America

People

• List of American Old West outlaws : list of known outlaws and gunfighters of the American frontier popularly known as the "Wild West".
• Big Nose George
• List of cowboys and cowgirls
• Schoolmarm : A female teacher that usually works in a one-room schoolhouse
• List of Western lawmen : list of notable law enforcement officials of the American frontier. They occupied positions as sheriff, marshal, Texas Rangers, and others.
• Gunfighter
• Category:Gunmen of the American Old West
• Category:Lawmen of the American Old West
• Category:Outlaws of the American Old West

Fiction

• Chris Enss : author of historical nonfiction that documents the forgotten women of the Old West.
• Zane Grey : author of many popular novels on the Old West
• Karl May : best selling German writer of all time, noted chiefly for wild west books set in the American West.
• Winnetou : American-Indian hero of several novels written by Karl May.
• Boot Hill (role-playing game) : One of the early alternative RPGs from TSR and using a similar system as in Dungeons & Dragons.
• Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier : an Award-winning alternate history western roleplaying gaming.
• Deadlands : an alternate history western horror roleplaying game.
• Dust Devils : a western roleplaying game modeled after Clint Eastwood films and similar darker Westerns.
• List of Western computer and video games: a list of computer and video games patterned after Westerns.

Further reading

Surveys

• Billington, Ray Allen, and Martin Ridge. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (5th ed. 2001); 892 pp; textbook with 160pp of detailed annotated bibliographies
• Deverell, William, ed. A Companion to the American West (Blackwell Companions to American History) (2004); 572pp
• Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History (Yale University Press, 2000). 576 pp.; textbook
• Josephy, Alvin. The American heritage book of the pioneer spirit (1965)
• Lamar, Howard, ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998); this is a revised version of Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West ed. by Howard Lamar (1977)
• Milner, Clyde, Carol O'Connor, and Martha Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West (1994) long essays by scholars
• Utley, Robert M. The Story of The West (2003)
• White, Richard. "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West (1991), textbook focused on post 1890 far west

Great Plains

• Michno, F. Gregory (2009). Encyclopedia of Indian wars: Western battles and skirmishes 1850-1890. Missoula, Montana: Mountain Press Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-87842-468-9. 
• Unruh, John David. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1860 (1993)
• Wishart, David J. , ed. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. U of Nebraska Press. 

Historiography

• Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage (1984), a favorable analysis of Turner's theories in relation to social sciences and historiography
• Etulain, Richard W., “Clio’s Disciples on the Rio Grande: Western History at the University of New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical Review 87 (Summer 2012), 277–98.
• Etulain, Richard W., ed. (2002). Writing Western History: Essays On Major Western Historians. U. of Nevada Press. 
• Hurtado, Albert L., “Bolton and Turner: The Borderlands and American Exceptionalism,” Western Historical Quarterly, (Spring 2013) 44#1 pp 5–20.
• Limerick, Patricia. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987), attacks Turner and promotes the New Western History
• Witschi, Nicolas S., ed. (2011). A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. John Wiley & Sons. 

"The Searchers" (1956) is a penetrating look at race, sex, violence and the psyche of the frontier

Images and memory

• Brégent-Heald Dominique. "Primitive Encounters: Film and Tourism in the North American West," Western Historical Quarterly (2007) 38#1 (Spring, 2007), pp. 47–67 in JSTOR
• Etulain, Richard W. Re-imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art (1996)
• Hausladen, Gary J. (2006). Western Places, American Myths: How We Think About The West. U. of Nevada Press. 
• Hyde, Anne Farrar. An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820-1920 (New York University Press, 1993)
• Mitchell, Lee Clark (1998). Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. U. of Chicago Press. 
• Prown, Jules David, Nancy K. Anderson, and William Cronon, eds. Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West (1994)
• Rothman, Hal K. Devil's Bargains: Tourism and the Twentieth-Century American West (University of Kansas Press, 1998)
• Slotkin, Richard (1998). The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. University of Oklahoma Press. 
• Slotkin, Richard (1960). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. University of Oklahoma Press. 
• Smith, Henry Nash (1950). Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 
• Tompkins, Jane (1993). West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. Oxford University Press. 

External links

Culture

• Western Folklife Center

History

• Autry National Center of the American West - Los Angeles, California
• American West History
• New Perspectives on 'The West'. The West Film Project, WETA-TV, 2001
• Dodge City, Kansas 'Cowboy Capital'
• Fort Dodge, Kansas History by Ida Ellen Rath, 1964 w/ photos
• Old West Kansas
• Tombstone Arizona History

Media

• 1908 Book on the Real West Free to read and full text search.